Haberler ve Duyurular

Aras Kargo employees gathered together under the Doğa Dostu Araslar (Eco-Friendly Aras Team) organization to clean up the shores of Lake Sapanca as part of their efforts to clean the coastal areas of Turkey. The employees prevented a total of 151kg domestic waste, which consists of 79 kilograms of plastics, 37 kilograms of metal, 18 kilograms of paper and 17 kilograms of glass, as well as 350 cigarette litters, from polluting the environment.

Turkey’s pioneering and innovative shipping company Aras Kargo maintains its projects aimed at protecting the environment and natural resources. Consisting of Aras Kargo employees and cleaning the coasts of Turkey in line with the company’s commitment to protecting the environment, the Doğa Dostu Araslar team resumed its coastal cleaning activities following the changes in the pandemic measures, and started cleaning the shores of Lake Sapanca. In the cleanup event, where Aras Kargo CEO Carsten Wallmann, Aras Kargo General Manager Utku Ayyarkın and Aras Kargo CFO Barbara Hagen, as well as other middle and top level managers participated in voluntarily, the Doğa Dostu Araslar prevented a total of 151kg domestic waste, which consists of 79 kilograms of plastics, 37 kilograms of metal, 18 kilograms of paper and 17 kilograms of glass, as well as 350 cigarette litters, from polluting the environment.

“We want to leave a better environment to the next generations”

Participating in the coastal cleanup event, Aras Kargo General Manager Utku Ayyarkın stated that human beings should regard the damage done to nature as damage done to their own life. Ayyarkın continued: “We are happy and excited to resume our coastal cleanup activities, which we sustained due to the pandemic measures. As the Doğa Dostu Araslar, today we are once again drawing attention to the awareness of sea cleanliness, which is becoming more and more crucial with every passing day. We will be maintaining our coastal cleanup events in different parts of our country in the upcoming period.”

Ayyarkın added: “Developing eco-friendly products must be the number one priority of corporations, for the greater aim of using natural resources effectively. As a corporation, we are developing eco-friendly products so that we are able to leave a cleaner world to the next generations. We are doing our best to create business processes which respect nature. To this end, we have been carrying out important projects through our Doğa Dostu Araslar platform, which we created to minimize the carbon footprint. With the Doğa Dostu Araslar Coastal Cleanup Movement, which we realized in collaboration with TURMEPA DenizTemiz Foundation, we prevented more than four metric tons of waste from mixing into the sea in a short span of four years, with the voluntary participation of more than 600 of our employees and their families.”

Ayyarkın also provided information regarding other eco-friendly practices: “In all of our operational fields, we are regularly separating waste which we can have recycled. In that regard, we enabled the recycling of approximately 470 metric tons of waste in the last year. As part of the Doğa Dostu Araslar formation, we established the largest fully electric vehicle fleet in 2011 in Turkey, and also started to renew our existing vehicles. We are maintaining our efforts to increase the usage rates of electric vehicles and electric forklifts. We also planted more than 140,000 trees. In a recent cooperation with the Aegean Forest Foundation, we donated 16,000 saplings for each of our 16,000 employees. Every day the number of our volunteers increases. We continue to instill the volunteering spirit to our employees and their families on environmental protection. We will continue to do our part so that we can leave a better environment to the next generations”.

Two international awards for the Doğa Dostu Araslar

The Doğa Dostu Araslar Coastal Cleanup project was granted the International Social Responsibility Excellence Award at the International CSR Excellence Awards organized in the United Kingdom. The project also received an award in the corporate social responsibility category at the prestigious International Stevie Awards.